Author: Dave Clark

  • Age of Myths, the Uncoupling: Campaign One Sheet

    Age of Myths, the Uncoupling: Campaign One Sheet

    For the first time I’m going to be playing a character in my world. One of my players in the last two campaigns is going to DM and together we set up the one-sheet so as to not change too much lore. One of the ideas I came up with early, was by playing in the Age of Myths, because any lore changes can just be referenced as legend when we play in the current era.

    The Road to the Uncoupling

    Your story begins in a prosperous world of togetherness and mutual can-do spirit.  Before the battle for the heart of Kirtin on the Lake (KotL) or the sacking of Kirtin in the Sky (KotS), before the Proctors spread death and misery in Sas Rurulit, and before the unprecedented events of the Awakening and the finding of Lorebooks, there was The Uncoupling.  The apocalypse that destroyed the weave of magic for the Kin and Kon, leaving Ken and the 5 coloured dragons of the Chromatic Convocation in complete possession of magik. 

    Players are part of a select group that were born with innate magical ability (you’ve been everflow touched) that is prized even in this magic-rich world.  Possibly you inherited your trait from a bloodline trait or ancestral ties to deeper magik of the Everflow.  It has shaped your early years, possibly enrolled at a young age by family in the scholarly studies to become part of the magik ruling core of society or you hid your talent and nurtured it on your own. 

    However, recently there have been rumblings, rumors about a shadow organization unhappy with the status quo, who seek to eliminate the existing ruling council and rule not by consensus but by force.  You’ve each been selected by the bronze Dragonborn Artok, tasked with this mission by his patron, the adult Bronze Dragon (Othimbane) who sits on the council, to identify and either infiltrate or forcefully break these fools of their notions and ensure that no other plots are forthcoming. 

    A global map of the world centered on the spaces where play in the campaign has occurred to this point.

    The following is written by the DM for this campaign.

    Premise 

    • This campaign takes at least three millennia before the Born Generation and the return of magic to the Lands of the Everflow.
    • Gain information about “The Shadows”, a secretive organization bent on wiping out the Ruling Council of Aur.
      • Artok has the rough information about several potential members that could lead you to a hideout or meeting place. 
    • Infiltrate or brute force your way into the group. 
    • Identify other members and find potential leads about who is the power behind “The Shadows”.
      • Keep (human council) and (gnome council) members apprised of your investigation. 
    • Possibly assist the council with additional tasks at your discretion.  

    Factions  (NPC names to come soon)

    • The Ruling Council of Aur (RCoA) – A group of 9 members, three of each Ken, Kin, and Kon, and 4 dragons, two each of metallic and chromatic. 
      • The RCoA is the “federational government” of Aur, with different cultures/regions governing in their own way and answering to the RCoA.
      • Kin: Human (F), Goliath (they), Halfling (M)
      • Ken: Elf (F), Elf (M), Dwarf (M)
      • Kon: Goblin (M), Bugbear (They), Hobgoblin (They)
      • Dragons:
        • Elder Metallic (Silver) – Tanargnyvur
        • Adult Metallic (Bronze) – Othimbane
        • Elder Chromatic (White) – Dwargauth
        • Adult Chromatic (Blue) – Nymaryxon
    • In occurrence with the rise of The Dragon moon (the fourth moon of the Aurian system), the dragons withdraw from the council for a year (draakmoeten) and meet at an undisclosed location with the world dragon (a deep time dragon) named Andarawus Del-mos. 
    • The Metallic Dragons
    • The Chromatic Dragons 
    • The Shining Order of Dreki – Holy dragonborn order who serve the Draconic races as paladins, clerics, and religious personages located across the world. Some that choose a more individual path travel and assist as Priests and Mortuary persons in smaller towns and villages.
      • Necromantic magic is thought to primarily flow through the draconic race). 
    • The Shadows – A heretofore unknown organization/cult/religion(?) focused on the overthrow of the RCoA, and to rule through force and oppression rather than through consensus. 

    Campaign Facets 

    • 2nd & 3rd tier drop in/out campaign play, starting at 5th level 
    • All PCs start at lv.5 with the added feat “Everflow Touched”, adding a +1 to spell attack modifier and adding one free 1st level spells (from any school except necromancy, unless your PC is dragonborn) to your spell list which can be cast once per long rest.
      • Material components will not be needed.
      • at lv. 9 this will increase to +2 and an additional spell (2nd lv.) can be learned.
    • Rules used are core 2014 WotC D&D, plus most player facing options from WotC
      • Check with the DM about using setting-specific feats, subclasses and spells
    • Allowed races are Kin (human, halfling, goliath), Kon (goblin, hobgoblin, bugbear), Ken (elf, dwarf, non-rock gnomes) and dragonborn/kobold as shining order of Dreki
    • Divine magic is thought to come from the forces of nature and the philosophies, there is no active pantheon of faith, beyond those who worship the dragons.
    • Potential for multiple pathways to quest completion
    • Player driven story creation in a sandbox setting
    • Wide regional/worldwide settings with airship and/or teleportation travel 
    • Actions may become legend
    • Milestone leveling – several sessions per level gain; saves time when we all don’t have to track XP
  • Goodbye Alignment. Hello short-form personality.

    Goodbye Alignment. Hello short-form personality.

    Alignment is tired, boring and essentially meaningless in 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons.

    Many playing the modern game trying to replace it with personality. Wizards of the Coast tried to take major steps towards personality play with their Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws system attached to backgrounds. That system uses five sentences of 5-25 words to describe the personality of the character. Alignment also exists.

    Then, if the DM and/or the other players remember your TIBF and you play to it you might get advantage via Inspiration.

    It’s a bulky system that requires memorizing a lot of detail that aren’t necessarily relevant to how your character is played. The Acolyte is in the SRD 5.1 CC BY. Here’s a sample of TIBF for a lawful good Acolyte.

    I see omens in every event and action. The gods try to speak to us, we just need to listen.
    I quote (or misquote) sacred texts and proverbs in almost every situation.
    Faith. I trust that my deity will guide my actions. I have faith that if I work hard, things will go well. (Lawful)
    I would die to recover an ancient relic of my faith that was lost long ago.
    I am suspicious of strangers and expect the worst of them.

    That’s 82 words plus two for lawful good. But really, it’s just a few. You don’t need that much detail.

    Just like when you fill out that your character has brown or brown-green eyes you know there is more detail to the eyes than just that word or two. You can do this for your personality.

    That Acolyte?

    Faithful, Suspicious, Orderly, Erudite.

    Replace the entire TIBF system with those four words. Can you memorize a few words that describe how the other characters in the party act? Absolutely! Your mind was already taking the shortcuts on the way to do so.

    Then award inspiration when the character is played along their personality.

    You could build your short-form personality using the official background information already provided. That’s a great start. But you could also use a list of personality traits. Here’s 638!

    A character modelled off a favorite movie or TV or comic or book or video game or etc character could use their traits too.

    • Margot from The Magicians — sexy, strong willed, crass, loyal
    • Wesley from The Princess Bride — dedicated, adaptable, loving
    • Tasselhoff from the original Dragonlance – friendly, curious, brave, aloof
    • Moiraine from early Wheel of Time – determined, withdrawn, studious
    • Lan from early Wheel of Time – lawful, loyal, commanding
    • Awf, my PC in Lost Mines – persistent, exuberant, fearless

    The intent with short-form personality is to reduce memorization, reward roleplaying and continue the de-emphasization of alignment in D&D.

    Be generous with the Inspiration you award. Play up the personality. Just make it simpler than a system that might require 100 words when you only need three to five.

  • Adapting Genoan revolutionary lunches to fantasy third places

    Adapting Genoan revolutionary lunches to fantasy third places

    During the Age of Revolutions the leaders who wanted liberalization and democracy in Genoa had no idea how to govern. They were a bit idealistic. They struggled to get the various classes of this significant mercantile kingdom to get along.

    This all comes up in a recent Nerd Farmer podcast featuring Nathan Perl-Rosenthal. And it’s going to inspire a new third-place tradition in my Dungeons & Dragons world.

    By Aldan-2 – {{[1]}}{{[2]}}, CC BY-SA 4.0

    One of the ways the Genoan revolutionaries tried to create cross-class conversations was by mandating public lunches be held on the streets before festivals. These lunches would be funded by the elites, had limitations on the number of courses and were intended to inspire conversation before the entire group proceeded together towards a town square for fest time.

    This attempt at a third place being a space in time rather than a physical building intrigues me. That porch was only a third place during the luncheon, roughly every two weeks. It didn’t work.

    This is a fantasy blog, mostly about a fantasy world where dragons and magic are real. Let’s make the Genoa public luncheons real.

    My world has a naval empire, which makes this easy. But it is rather hierarchical and centered on the influence of the navy as sailor-citizens with power and influence. It is expansionist. Daoud won the war with Kirtin twice, and just lost their hold on Kirtin-on-the-Lake, the winter capital of Kirtin.

    Douad’s fleets sail the seas trading goods, conquering territory and bring their wealth back to the homeland.

    Daoud is the southern nation and controls the Green Isles in the Southeast.

    This is where the lunchtime third places come in!

    These now-wealthy sailors, officers and captains are required, by the Admiralty of the Land, upon returning to port to share their wealth and throw a party in the neighborhood from which they came.

    They lunch and fest together, with the Admiralty and Royalty surprising random porches with visits.

    This now ingrained tradition started because when the first ships came back with massive wealth they were seen as a threat to the non-sailing gentry. So that leadership in a form of taxation started the luncheon program. This kept the peasants that didn’t sail happy with the leadership and that joy spread.

    These lunches are simple fare — three courses, one which must always be from the land the ship just visited. There’s always a flatbread, that was originally simple but is now treated as a complex way to serve a fourth course that is not in violation of the edict. There is wine and coffee, tea and liquor.

    There is joy.

    Then there’s the party, always in sight of the harbor with the ships lit and glowing at mast and crossbeam. There are flags and fireworks (the best ships travel with Sparklers). These parties are on a time limit. They start within two sunrises of the ship’s return. They end the next morning.

    And everyone participates. The paupers, urchins and sweeps know that when a ship returns they will eat well for at least a day, often two. The displays of wealth are ostentatious and the people are happy. These aren’t circuses, nor taxes. It’s Daoudian Luncheon — one of the two third places in the culture. The ships are the other third place.

  • My Spring ’24 soccer team is inspired by the 90s

    My Spring ’24 soccer team is inspired by the 90s

    Being able to support my friends who do fun stuff is good. ECS continues to run Pub League, a simple barely competitive set of two soccer leagues full of joy that embraces everyone. Once upon a time I sponsored them while I managed Sounder at Heart. Then I stopped because I didn’t manage Sounder at Heart. A year ago they had an empty slot that needed a sponsor. I was able to and that was when my team was a group of pirates. Last fall it was vampires.

    Now it’s the Almost Full 90 FC, inspired by the era when I was a teen with Trapper Keepers and Peechees playing D&D hiding my inner nerd behind pastels (including my jeans).

    Two soccer jerseys and two logos. First soccer jersey on the left is a swirl of pastel colors in a sunset with two shiny dolphins jumping out of a pastel ocean over the setting sun. Second jersey is black with bands of swirly pastels over the black. Top logo is Almost Full 90s FC, a 1990s logo similar to MS Paint of that era. Second logo is for Full Moon Storytelling which shows a rising full moon with a polyhedral d20 silhouette embedded in it. The moon is rising out of a pine forest. The words Full Moon Storytelling are under the forest.

    Every player name is inspired by 90s era TV shows, songs and memes (we had those back then).

    Coaches: Bop it Throw it Pass it, That’s Brisk Baby, and Eat My Shorts

    Players: WHAT’S THE 411, COOPER, FRESH PRINCE OF DEFENSE, SPORTY SPICE, FOOTBALL HEAD, THAT’S BRISK BABY, I DID NOT INHALE, EAT MY SHORTS, ON A BREAK, BOP IT THROW IT PASS IT, DOCTOR, BEANIE BABE, REPTAR ON TURF, TRUNCHBULL, D’OH!’, MIDAS, YOU’VE GOT MAIL, STREET SOCCER, TOO YOUNG FOR THIS, UGH, AS IF!, NEVERMIND, NON BLONDES.

    I’m telling you, they’re going to win the ‘ship.

    There’s a couple other cool bits. The Captain’s armband is inspired by iconic frogs from the era and unlike most soccer jerseys these days, the back is similar to the front — with a unicorn.

    As always, the lesson from this is to support your friends when they do rad things. It’s totally awesome.

  • Kobold Press Eonics offer time loop fun to D&D

    Kobold Press Eonics offer time loop fun to D&D

    I’m one of those passive backers for most projects. For Tales of the Valiant I sent Kickstarter my money to send Kobold Press and then I waited. I did this because I have enough of their products that I know I will use them. Many of their dragon variants are part of my world right now.

    That also means I get fun surprises for their intermittent reveals, like the Eonics.

    This new lineage (their current term for race) is a bunch of time travellers who lost their ways on the time stream, now existing your D&D/Black Flag/5e world without the ability to get back to their normal time.

    They do still have minor time travelling abilities. That’s where things get fun. Their core abilities are about possibly knowing the past, their expectation that things are going to go wrong and a skin that’s been scarred by time streams. Those combine to have fun uses as monks, rogues, bards and maybe even an off-brand barbarian.

    In Black Flag (Kobold Press’s SRD) and Tales of the Valiant characters are born into a lineage and grow via a heritage. Heritages are similar in power to 5e (2014) subraces, but are open to any species/race/lineage.

    The eonic-themed heritages immediately become part of my world. This is time-hoppy funness.

    Time-lost Drifter

    Those raised as drifters have a special belt and some exhaustion based mechanics with a future-self time echo. Plus, they are hard to kill. Their body comes disconnected from time.

    Inheritor of the Future

    The inheritors get a super-advantage Help action and a powerful time warping staff.

    Mirror Worlder

    These peoples can see alternate realities and grab things from them. This is a classic trope in fantasy that hasn’t been embraced much in 5e, until now.

    The Eonics and all of their heritages fit in the World of the Everflow as the peoples from the future who went back to when the gods shunted off magic from the World. They would be 3,000 years in the future from the current games, popping into a world that they helped break and create at the same time.

    With these and the Tales of the Valiant goblins I’m very excited to bring more variety to my table.

  • Children of Chorl

    Children of Chorl

    The first Scholar to be discovered was the Necromancer. His works were hard to ignore, as the undead he mistakenly raised thinking he was helping the peoples of Fort Ooshar and Sheljar broke the empire. That built a distrust for newly released magic.

    Sheljar, Telse, Mira, Qin and the other cities near the Everflow and its two rivers.

    This is likely why Chorl attempted to hide. Not only was his work in Transformation often done involuntarily, Chorl wanted to conquer. His goal was to fill the gaps from the Fall of Sheljar, taking over the Western Wildes via his hybrid peoples. For Chorl, in all his evils, was creating new peoples, a combination of humanity and their companions.

    Some chose to be combined, these peoples frequently became his lieutenants and sergeants. Many fled. The breaking of his camps and the deaths of Chorl and his Student Anderson created an opportunity to escape.

    Now, the Children of Chorl exist in mixed pockets of freedom almost always outside of the major towns and cities. They may want vengeance hating Scholars and magic; they may want freedom; they may want to be respected. They are all hybrids in the World of the Everflow.

    Mechanics for the Children of Chorl

    To play a Child of Chorl in the World of the Everflow select a hybrid species/race. There’s a long list of them available in DnD Beyond now, thanks to Wizards of the Coast adding the Humblewood setting.

    Though none of the core species for 2014 or 2024 D&D are Children of Chorl the current list from official products includes;

    Aarakocra, centaur, harengon, kenku, lizardfolk, minotaur, satyr, shifter, tabaxi, tortle, giff, hadozee, owlin, leonin, loxodon, locathah, or grung.

    Players at my table can also use those from Humblewood;

    Cervan, corvum, gallus, hedge, jerbeen, luma, mapach, raptor, strig or vulpin.

    Then select a feat or bonded companion. Though all Children of Chorl were a goliath, halfling or human combined with a bonded companion, that doesn’t mean that they didn’t have more than one companion.

    Decide what the character was before they were melded. They should generally be someone from the West. They can be someone who volunteered or not, that’s up to you.

    Their background and class represent what they were before. How they present to the world now is similar to the X-Men.

  • Happy birthday to the dungeons and happy birthday to the dragons

    Happy birthday to the dungeons and happy birthday to the dragons

    My experience with Dungeons & Dragons doesn’t go back to the beginning. That would be kind of hard, as I’m not 50. It does go back to some of my earliest memories. For me D&D always started as a storytelling game, probably because the way the first DM I played under introduced it to me.

    Derek convinced us to play because he was and is a storyteller. He knew that I loved The Hobbit, Narnia, King Arthur and Robin Hood. The pitch was simple — “Do you want to tell your own stories in the world?”

    The answer was simply “Yes.”

    We played with, those simple dice that needed a Crayon to color in the numbers. For some reason I only remember d6s and dungeons.

    Two old d6 showing the number 5. They are a green like the color of exposed old copper.

    D&D is what started me on my journey to tell stories. I always thought those stories I would tell would be fiction. As of yet, conventional publishers haven’t accepted any of the short stories I’ve pitched.

    But it also started me on the journey to be a journalist, and that worked out to be sports (mostly soccer) and then marketing tales. Derek’s connected to that journey too, but that advances several years into high school and again to when I was an emergent baseball blogger (which didn’t work out).

    Later in my journey Dungeons & Dragons became the central point of my strongest friendships in those harsh teenage years. Like many GenX suburban white males, I was a latchkey kid in a neighborhood with cul de sacs and basements.

    Those basements provided our play space and our avoidance. We avoided thinking about divorcing parents, impending nuclear annihilation, ozone depletion and whatever other terror the nightly news foisted on us.

    Erik, Justin, Abel, Colin, Jacob, Andy, Chris, and the others — we hid from all of that. There were early video games, many board games, and other role-playing games, but it was D&D that was our unifying factor. The stories we told via rolling oddly shaped dice and convoluted rules gave us an escape. We were big, damn heroes. We were anti-heroes. We were thieves and priests and archers and wizards. We adhered to the noble codes that our imperfect real lives could not. We violated those codes to see what would happen.

    That late 80s to early 90s version of D&D that we played was sometimes in dungeons and always dragons. Every world we played in had dragons in the background providing terror, often ending in a TPK.

    My second D&D era was about avoidance. The stories and people helped me make it through the bad times — puberty, divorces, fights with friends, being the outsider from the in-cliques. Without that group I’d be a horrible athlete, the storyteller incapable of finishing a tale, a ‘gifted’ kid who avoided hard work, someone with constantly broken ankles and a body that doctors considered brutally altering because I was dramatically smaller than my peers.

    In the Army I nearly avoided D&D. During my time at DLI I did participate in a Vampire: The Maquerade LARP in Pacific Grove, California. That was the only place I met non-military people while in that hybrid college-military experience. In 5th Group one of the 18D (combat medics) invited me to do solo play with him as the DM. That was basically impossible to keep up because our deployment schedules didn’t quite overlap. We also never played when deployed together. I’m pretty certain no one in his ODA knew that’s what we did when we hung out outside of work.

    Then D&D disappeared from my life.

    I thought I grew up.

    I thought I didn’t need the funky dice, the tales.

    5th edition brought me back after not playing regularly since 94 (the 5th Group experience was 97-98).

    My current era of D&D is broader in playing styles, stories told and the people I play with. There have been two dozen people who have played in the now-seven campaigns within the World of the Everflow. Plus I’ve been a player in four campaigns and hosted a charity actual play for YachtCon.

    Where my first era of D&D planted the seeds of creativity and the second era taught me math (and kept me as sane as I’ll be due to avoidance), this third era of my Dungeons and my Dragons is about exploring fellowship, exploring philosophical issues, confronting the issues of the era rather than avoiding them.

    On this 50th birthday of D&D I discover that my eras of D&D are the eras of my life, showing a maturity in my life while being skills and abilities I continue to use in this life.

    My game doesn’t really have dungeons. Dragons aren’t omnipresent. But it’s still the same game.

    My game doesn’t roll characters. They’re created for story rather than optimization. It’s still the same game.

    My game isn’t in the Forgotten Realms or another official world (or third party world). It’s a world concocted by me and mutually, continually created by us. It’s still the same game.

    For forty years this game has been present in my life. At times it has been my most defining hobby. Other times it was locked behind a haunted door in my head, hidden but influencing my personal journey.

    Today I don’t lock my passions away. People get to see them. They can judge me — whatever.

    We’ll play in public today. Something that was nigh impossible in the 80s, when even my own family thought D&D meant devil worship.

    Today we roll for initiative.

  • Lore 24: Oath of Free Sheljar

    Lore 24: Oath of Free Sheljar

    All of the campaigns that have taken place win the World of the Everflow have focused on tracking down the various Lorebooks, with each group having other side quests, generally towards making the world for the common peoples of the Lands of the Six Kingdoms.

    They’ve run counter to the Proctors, an evil faction that is trying to control knowledge of magic, and rogue Scholars who are spreading knowledge of magic in order to control people. Necromancy and Transformation are the ones most counter to traditional D&D goodness.

    The only other super-natural organization is the Orthodox Church of Quar. The Quarites control access to the Everflow and a massive merchant endeavor with their churches also working as trade posts and shops for what are in game terms healing potions.

    This world has no equal to the Factions of tradition D&D, or the Knights of the Round Table, or Templars or other super-national knightly orders. No one has wanted to be in one.

    But if a player wanted to play a character with these kinds of ideals and/or oaths, we’d talk about how it would fit. Knowing my player base the inspiration would be the Free City of Sheljar, the egalitarian re-founding of Sheljar after the early campaigns purged the Necromancer, his agents of undeath and the Tunneling Nightmares (they’ll be the subject of a future Lore 24).

    Based off the players and characters that founded the Free City such an idealistic organization would look similar to the Harpers, with a dash of de oppresso liber and a side of asymmetric organization.

    • Determination for all peoples Kin, Ken, Kon and any who think.
    • Share knowledge, so all in the world may live better lives.
    • Defend those that cannot defend themselves and their companions
    • Judge behavior, not the companion, the nationality or the faith
    • Recognize successes at spreading the word of a Free Shejar and Free Everflow

    Like the oaths of D&D paladins, these ideals within the oath are aspirational. They aren’t to be perscriptive.

    A player wanting to be part of this order wouldn’t necessarily pledge to sergeant or knight. They wouldn’t need to swear fealty to the current Mayor of Sheljar (Samul). The order would rise because the oath is a bit viral — it’s one that encourages heroic actions and fulfilling quests.

    A band could be one halfling and her dog, or an entire airxip of goblins, or an adventuring party, or three elves visiting the Everflow that abandon their fey pacts, or a group of Mehmdians, or a village near Telse, or a tribe in Crinth. A band inspired by the ideals of Free Sheljar aren’t sworn to them, in fact the current governance of Kirtin-on-the-Lake is inspired by Sheljar, but free from them.

    That’s the knightly order I would make if I were to make a knightly order.

  • Lore 24: Mijdaf, the paddler

    Lore 24: Mijdaf, the paddler

    One of the great parts of Dungeons & Dragons is the impromptu nature of it all. When you’re at the table, especially for a homebrew campaign, things just happen. The participants riff off of each other and a story is created that shouldn’t exist and can never exist again. It is a moment in time. Mijdaf was born in one such moment recently.

    Mijdaf, the paddler

    Mijdaf is an NPC in the current campaign. He started because the group needed transportation up the river from their neighborhood to one on the very edges of urbanity.

    Me: There’s a barge pulled along the ropes on the side of the river.

    The PCs: That seems slow.

    Me: There’s also a paddleboat operated by a goliath.

    The PCs: We take that.

    That’s how a desert goliath living in the largest city of the region started to grow into relevance in the game. But at this point he’s just a ferryman in a boat. Sure, he’s huge and can paddle upriver faster than those humans can pull themselves, but he’s not yet unique.

    PCs: What kind of birds does he have?

    Me: Four seagulls that mostly rest on a branching perch above his head. He asks where your companions are.

    PCs: We’re trying to get a new one for Lauray. Do you know a good breeder?

    As Mijdaf I talk about two options and why he has one that he prefers. It’s one that doesn’t recognize the current government. Mijdaf starts talking about the history of the region that connects to an artisan that they’d met in the previous session.

    They riff off of this, pulling more information from the goliath. It’s interactive at this point. They roll very well. I start playing into Mijdaf being willing to talk, constantly. Soon the PCs figure out that the reason that Mijdaf was available is because no locals will ride in his boat.

    He’s not just a talker — he’s a conspiracy theorist.

    Mijdaf pulls out a slate with tangential connections between various politicians, professors and military leaders. He keeps going.

    At the table this was great. The players with me that day were smiling, nodding and laughing. The total scene may have been 10 minutes. There were some social dice rolls and a lot of me as the DM picking up on table clues to see what the group was enjoying and emphasizing that.

    And then Mijdaf reached the destination, dropping them off. He and they never expected to see each other again.

    A day later in game time the group needs to get back from the nearly rural neighborhood to their home base deep in the port city. They recognize a paddleboat, but don’t see Mijdaf. They steal the boat.

    That’s how Mijdaf, the paddler, went from a simple single scene NPC into a character with purpose, gaming joy, and just possibly a problem for the future.

  • Lore 24: School of Herbimancy

    Lore 24: School of Herbimancy

    Within the World of the Everflow magic is relatively new, well besides the Everflow’s healing power and ability to flow in two directions and the powerful bond between beast and Kin. In the current Proctors of Song and Book magic returned ~27 years ago. First that was via the Born Generation when over a period of a year every child of Kin came of age knowing a single cantrip. About 7 years ago the Lorebook of Divination was found and over the following years, magic started to spread with the realization that there were 17 or so Lorebooks scattered across the lands.

    The current campaign takes place in Sas Rurulit, where the Proctors are attempting to collect two Lorebooks. But the ingenious groups that control the Lorebooks down in this land broke them up. The Lorebook of the Book are people who cast directly from books and scrolls.

    These peoples are manifesting magic at various colleges. The college of metallurgy used every fire and electricity spell to forge metals. The college of hydrology was water and air spells, with a bit of illusion. The Proctors (PCs) have essentially destroyed these two schools ability to function by either capturing or damaging the master books there.

    In the last session they visited a public park that is also the School of Herbimancy.

    Photo by Chris F on Pexels.com

    School of Herbimancy

    Unlike traditional D&D approaches to herbs, the School of Herbimancy isn’t about ingesting herbs in some fashion to gain magical effects. Instead, the plants themselves are the magic.

    For example, the paths in the park were softly lit at night via the glowing flowers of a particular plant (a version of Dancing Lights). Maybe the smell of burning needles from a deciduous tree heals (Healing Spirit). Fallen branches from a tree are a magical staff (Shillelagh). Within Sas Rurulit, this school’s magic is artifice meets druid — the plants are simultaneously technology and magical.

    The group failed a series of checks, one with a natural 1, so they don’t know the professor in charge of the school. Instead, they got the name of the banker financing the project. A way to turn a nat 1 into a meaningful failure!

    They also didn’t quite figure out that the seed room may be the equal of a scroll room or library at the other schools they’ve raided (some read this site and it would be a natural conclusion for the characters to reach after fleeing the fires they set to cover their raid).

    I’m doing Lore 24, an attempt to write small lore elements daily in the year 2024. Each element will be something that’s come up in play or will come up in play within my homebrew World of the Everflow — there will be actionable threads for PCs to grab onto and advance the story.